Beyond the Silence
by JuweWright
Summary: "I can't tell anyone", he repeated over and over again. Hermione helplessly stroked his back a couple of times. "Then don't", she said. He stared at her with a bewildered expression. "Don't say anything", she repeated. "Just play. I will stay and listen, if you want me to."
1. Escape

_"Music gives a soul to the univ_

 _erse, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything."_  
 _\- Plato_

During first year, she had been pretty sure she would never miss the piano. She had been so overwhelmed by all the new challenges that Hogwarts School of Wizardry presented that she had not even thought about her piano once during the first couple of weeks. But then the bullying had started, because she was too much of a know-it-all for most of the other kids. She had not found friends easily and especially Ronald Weasley had been an insufferable idiot towards her in the beginning. That was before the troll and before they had somehow ended up in the golden trio with Harry Potter.

Professor McGonagall found her sitting on the stairs in front of the library where she was trying to hold back the tears. The teacher took her to her office, sat her down in front of a warm fire and handed her a cup of tea with at least two spoonfuls of honey in it. Then she sat down in the huge green velvet armchair opposite her and let her talk. Hermione had told her everything from how much she missed her parents and their support to the fact that she just didn't fit in anywhere.

Is there anything I can do to help you cope?", McGonagall asked, watching her intently over the rim of her glasses.

Hermione bit her lip, insecure whether she was really allowed to speak openly in front of the head of Gryffindor house. She had not been a happy pupil at primary school either. She had always been the bookish type and her class mates had hated her for it. They had called her names, played tricks on her and waited for her after school to beat her up. When she had come home she had neither talked to her mother nor to her father but sat down on the piano stool and played, played, played, until all the pain and all the anger and all the frustration had bled out through her fingers and turned into music. She did not say any of it, but Professor McGonagall seemed to read her mind.

"I remember reading in your files that you were a keen musician before you joined our school, Miss Granger."

Hermione nodded in consent.

"Yet I have never heard you play. Wouldn't you like to practice? A lot of pupils do that in their free time. There is a soundproof little chamber on the fourth floor that was erected just for that purpose. It's got a piano in it which has been enchanted by Dumbledore so it tunes itself. The room is not frequented by a lot of students at the moment, so I guess we could easily find a slot for you."

Professor McGonagall went over to her table, pulled out a small leather bound folder and filed through it.

"Yes. There is a spot for you. If you want to, you can play every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon between four and five. That would be after the Weasley twins and before Mr Malfoy. Should I put your name down?"

Hermione stared at the teacher for a second, before she nodded happily. But as she walked back to the Gryffindor common room she was still contemplating what she had just learnt. Fred and George Weasley played music? That did come as a surprise. But it was much more possible to imagine them as musicians than that egomaniac horrible Slytherin boy Draco Malfoy.


	2. Friendship

_"Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing."_  
 _― John Erskine_

"Merlin's beard, Hermione, you gave me a scare!"

Fred Weasley mimed a heart attack, clutched the front of his worn-out black "Magic Motown" T-shirt and went down onto the carpet with a spasm. George was still packing up his battered second-hand guitar in the precious case he had bought from his savings in their fourth year and rolled his eyes at the young witch.

"You know him...", he said.

"I know you both", Hermione retorted and held out her hand to pull his twin brother - who had finished his improvised imitation of a slow and cruel death by angina pectoris – to his feet again.

"I've known you ever since I heard you play for the first time."

It had been an interesting revelation. The twins, who always sported the devil-may-care attitude and were proud to tell everyone they were the ones with the most detention hours in the whole castle, were very serious about music – almost as serious as about Weasley Wizard Wheezes. The songs they wrote showed a completely different Fred and George whom Hermione had come to appreciate and know by listening in on their practices a few times.

And she knew them even better since they had started to throw in small jamming sessions on Saturdays where they combined her piano-playing with their skills on the guitar and the drums. They had become pretty good. Hermione and George usually shared vocals although they both weren't really into singing. Fred loved to sing but had not managed the art of combining the forceful battering of a drum set with decent phrasing yet. When he tried to sing, it sounded as if someone was kicking him in the back in regular intervals so that his breath came out in puffs. They had tried working with Hannah Abbot who was a pretty good singer but she just didn't get their groove and so they had gone back to just practicing as a trio. It felt good to keep their regular meetings up. They knew they would probably not be allowed to play together much longer, what with Umbridge taking over the school and making everything illegal.

"You coming to practice later?", asked Fred, giving her a peck on the cheek.

He was referring to the DA meetings they had started to hold in the room of requirements. Hermione nodded. She didn't have too much homework to do and anyways Dumbledore's Army was the best thing she had ever been part of. Harry was a really good teacher and had helped everyone to progress. He never became impatient or annoyed with anyone but showed things over and over again, until everyone – even Neville – got it right.  
"Cool", said George and shouldered his guitar case. "Don't let yourself be caught by any pure-blood ferrets on the way."

Hermione pulled a face.

"By the way", she said before the twins could run off. "Do you know how come that Draco Malfoy, I mean Malfoy, plays an instrument? I mean, you should think that required some sort of social skill and empathy, wouldn't you?"

"Social skills?", George looked stricken.

"Empathy?", Fred laughed. "You're talking to us, Granger, we're not particularly into that kind of..."

Hermione cut him short, boxing him into the side.

"Oh, shut up Fred Weasley. You only ever pretend you don't care for anyone else. Don't you think I know how much you dote on Ginny and pretty much all of your family..."

"Except for Percy", George chipped in.

Hermione crossed her arms.

"... even for Percy, although you will never admit that."

Fred shrugged and this time he answered in earnest.

"I haven't got the foggiest, Hermione, but I guess his parents made him take lessons. They're damned rich and sort of royalty. You should see their mansion. It's a friggin' castle, that place! And sons of well to do family's are supposed to be accomplished."

"That's daughters", murmured Hermione, "and pretty old fashioned. We're not living in the Regency Era any more."

Fred shrugged again.

"They're Death Eaters. Their minds work like that. They're not normal people, so why should their brains work in a normal way. I bet they forced him to learn it against his will. That would so fit the whole picture."

The twins left and Hermione was left with her thoughts. Usually kids that had been pressured into playing when they were young, stopped practicing at some point and never found their way back to the wonderful universe that music offered to them. They could not appreciate what they had been given and looked for other things to fulfill them. Some of them became sportsmen others started writing. Just a few of them managed to shake off the negative feelings that years of forced practicing had awoken and learned to appreciate music again. The fact that Draco Malfoy still played regularly was either a sign of his parents influence on him still playing a much bigger roll than the big mouthed Slytherin would ever have admitted or it meant that he had founf a way past the barrier. Hermione knew she would probably never find out which of the two options was true and whether Fred's hypothesis was right at all, but she could not help wondering. With a sigh, she sat down at the piano and started off with a couple of scales to warm up her fingers.


	3. Coincidence

" _Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on."_

― _John Keats_

The skies outside were cloudy. It had been raining for days, but the music room was warm and dry and did not have any windows to show the gray and dull castle grounds. Hermione had been working on a new piece she had written. She smiled at the neat little black dots on the paper before her. Being a witch came with so many advantages. She had bewitched the parchment so it would automatically keep track on what she played. When she had to alter a passage, she only needed to tap the right phrase and the notes jumped up and down the scales to fit the new pattern. She was very proud of her composition. It started off pretty quiet, sad, melancholic, but then swelled up to become a huge angry tower of harmony that would have done Beethoven proud. She blamed Ron for it. He was driving her up the wall, him and Lavender that was. She tried out the last passage again, banging on the keys of the piano, feeling satisfied with how the whole thing progressed, when she heard the door opening.

She had not taken any notice of the time. Hermione usually made a point of being out of the room about two minutes before her slot ended, because she wanted to avoid any contact with Malfoy. Not that he ever did anything if they met in front of the music room by chance. He didn't even say nasty things to her then. They had a mutual silent understanding that the music room and their practice slots were sacred ground and that a truce had to be upheld in its' direct surroundings. She immediately stopped playing and wanted to grab her sheet music, when Draco pulled the door closed behind him.

"Don't", the Slytherin boy murmured. "I really liked that. And you can't really leave it hanging there, can you?"

Hermione turned around to face him. He looked ill. His skin was waxen and there were black rims around his eyes.

"I know you feel that way. You can't just stop playing in the middle of the piece. That's like stopping in the middle of telling a story. You have to tell it to the end otherwise there's something missing."

He leaned against the door, breathing heavily. She wondered when he had slept and eaten properly for the last time and scolded herself for the thought. He was a Slytherin and an idiot and probably a Death Eater and he hated her from the bottom of his heart so there was absolutely no need to commiserate with him.

"Come on, Granger. Play it again and tell the whole story this time. I'll just stand here and listen or pretend I'm not there, whatever you prefer."

She hesitated for a moment, then sat back down on the piano stool.

"I'd be glad to have you listen", she said and was surprised to find it was the truth. Draco Malfoy had done everything to make her despise him, but this was the music room and in here they were not the Mudblood and the evil Slytherin, they were just two musicians. And it always was an honour to have someone listen to your work on a professional level.

She started playing. The notes dripped from her fingers like raindrops. The pace was slow in the beginning but built up gradually until she raced through the last phrases. The melody ended with an open chord, no peace, no solution, open end. She heard Draco sigh from his place at the door. He took a few steps into the room and slumped into an old arm chair. His gray eyes were focused on hers.

"Did you actually write that, Granger? Because if you did, that's one amazing thing. I'd like to have a copy of the sheet music, if you don't mind."

She had never known which instrument he played. Malfoy's slot had always been the one after hers and as the room was soundproof there was no way she could have stayed and listened to find out. So he was a piano player as well. Somehow that stirred something in her soul. She blinked and took a deep breath to get rid of it.

"No problem", she said. "I'll copy them and just leave them lying on the piano next time."

She got up, and went to the door.

"You should get some sleep", she heard herself say to her own amazement. "You look like you've had a hoard of Dementors coming round for tea."


	4. Listen

_"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."_  
 _\- Victor Hugo, Hugo's Works: William Shakespeare_

They had danced around each other for weeks now. She knew it had been partly her fault. She could just have left early the way she had always done. She could have done as said and just left the copy of the sheet music for "Storm" - as she had called her composition – on the piano. Instead she had played until the very last minute of her slot to find that Draco came in a minute early – which was also unheard of. He shrugged apologetically and gave a twisted smile. And he had still looked like hell. He had thanked her for the sheet music and there had been an awkward silence before she had bolted out of the door as fast as she could.

After that very first incident, they had always met each other either at the door or in the hallway or inside the room. It was always a pretty weird situation to be alone with one of your worst enemies yet strangely unable to see him as your enemy at this very moment.

Three weeks after he had entered on her finishing off the "I hate Ronald Weasley and his idiotic girlfriend Lavender"-tune, Draco arrived five minutes early for his slot. He looked even worse than usually. His light blonde hair was disheveled, the white shirt creased, his face worn.

"You know there's really no point in trying out to go without sleep for a month", said Hermione, letting the last notes of "Wild Mountain Thyme" fade into silence.

Draco gave a half-smile.

"Noted, Granger. Although sometimes you can't really fall asleep, even if you want to."

He hesitated for a second, then continued whilst pulling out some sheets from his folder and placing them on the piano: "I have been unable to sleep properly for weeks on end now. I toss and turn and try to sleep but I just can't because I can't stop thinking."

His fingers were trembling and the veins on the backs of his hands stood out like dark blue rivers against the paleness of his skin. He leaned against the piano with both arms outstretched. It looked as if he was in pain, like someone who was tormented physically or psychologically. Hermione waited. After a while, he looked up and shook his head before coming over and sitting down next to her on the piano stool. She had never been that close to him before. She could smell his shampoo from this close – something with herbs, probably peppermint.

"I am not sure what to say, Granger. I would so love to talk to someone. But I can't, I just can't."

He balled his fists and closed his eyes. His whole body was trembling. Slowly, hesitant, because she knew how the Draco she had always known would respond to this, she reached out and rested her hand on his back. He did not pull away, jump up, shout at her and call her a Mudblood. Instead he seemed to relax a little.

"I can't tell anyone", he repeated over and over again.

Hermione helplessly stroked his back a couple of times.

"Then don't", she said.

He stared at her with a bewildered expression.

"Don't say anything", she repeated. "Just play. I will stay and listen, if you want me to."

She sat down in the old armchair, pulled her knees up to her chin and closed her eyes. The music room was always well-heated and as it didn't have any windows, it often felt stuffy. But today, after she had got drenched to the bone twice on her way to and from Care of Magical Creatures, the warmth was a welcome counterpart to the rain and cold outside the castle.

Draco bustled about for a bit, arranging sheets, screwing the stool a bit higher, to make it fit his longer legs. Then he started playing. It was the saddest, most desperate melody Hermione had ever heard. It spoke of loneliness and peril and of darkness. Only at the very end there were a few lighter harmonies woven into it, small bits that almost sounded hopeful. Almost. Not quite. The piece ended in b minor.

She did not speak afterwards. Neither did Draco. She only got up, went over to the piano and hugged him. Again, it struck her as odd how he just accepted it. Some part of her was still waiting for him to call her a Mudblood and a filthy Muggle and push her away. But it didn't happen. He clumsily returned the hug and waved when she almost fled through the door.


	5. Improvise

" _If music be the food of love, play on,_

 _Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,_

 _The appetite may sicken, and so die."_

― _William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night_

She was running, running as fast as she could, because there was no way she could talk about this to anyone, no way she could admit in front of herself how shocked she had really been by the news. Harry had run into Malfoy in Myrtle's bathroom and there had been a fight. There was no chance that these guys would not end up in a fight when confronting each other without lookers on. And Harry had used the _Sectumsempra_ spell on the Slytherin boy almost killing him for good. Almost everyone else in Gryffindor house was of the opinion that killing Draco Malfoy was a good thing to do. They had discussed different ways of killing him when Hermione had finally managed to get away. She ran up to the fourth floor and burst into the music room. The familiar smell of burning logs and dust embraced her. She fell into the armchair and closed her eyes. Why did she even care? Malfoy had never been anything but rude towards her. Why did it bother her if other people said he deserved to die? But she already knew the answer. She had seen his face, she had heard him play. She had looked into the deep abyss of his soul and found only pain and torment. And she felt pity, more pity than rage. If there had been anything in the world to help Draco Malfoy face his demons or outrun them, she would have volunteered to help with it. But would there ever be a way? Madam Pomfrey had taken care of him after Snape had fixed the worst bits. Harry's description of the events had been quite drastic, but she still believed he had not told the full story to anyone. Even Harry Potter knew that slaying a fellow student – even if he was a complete nuisance and an enemy – was not a heroic thing to do.

She sat down in front of the piano and played a few angry chords before stopping again. Calm down, she told herself. Breathe. And then play. It will help. It always helps. And so she played. She did not even bring sheet music, but she let her thoughts and emotions take control of her fingers and just played. She had never been good at improvising when she had been younger. It had been the twins who had taught her, especially Fred. Fred was not only an excellent drummer, he was incredibly talented – a thing that almost nobody knew about – and whatever instrument he touched, he could play them all.

"Except for the oboe", George had exclaimed when she had mentioned it to him. "He tried that once and went almost purple. Didn't get a single note out of it."

"Oboes are weird", Fred had mumbled. "They're just weird."

It had been Fred who had asked her, whether she would be up for a band. She had shaken her head and told him she wasn't that good and she didn't know how to do it. So he had sat her down and talked her through the whole basic material, the chords, harmonies, how they worked together.

"It's maths", he had said. "It's like really basic maths. But you won't need the maths any more once you've got the hang of it. Once you've got it, you'll just feel it. That's when it gets fun."

She smiled when she thought of the twins. They had become a second Golden Trio, a trio that hardly anyone ever knew of. She still missed the boys ever since they had left the school in their typical Weasley-twin-way and made a fool of Umbridge. She had seen the shop and how well their plan had worked out, but she still felt a pang of sadness when she remembered their jam sessions. She had leapt into one of her first composition, one that Fred had co-written. As far as "writing" went. They had never taken the pains to actually make sheet music. The had just tried that tune over and over again until it sounded right and had burnt itself into their memory. She ran through the piece at double-time almost tying her fingers into a knot. With a grim satisfied smile, she banged the last chord down onto the keyboard.

"Wow, that was impressive", said a familiar voice behind her and made her jump.

"Malfoy!", she shouted, staring at the pale face she had come to know so well. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I got bored in the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey said I wasn't allowed to go back to the common room yet because she thinks facing questions from a dozen Slytherins or more might still be too much for me. So I asked her, whether I could just go here. I was kind of hoping to find you here. I know your head works like that. Granger's upset, Granger bangs on the piano, until she can cope. Granger's sad, she'll play you the saddest Brahms piece she knows. Granger's happy, she'll play a fast-paced Mozart."

He smiled and sat down in his armchair again. Hermione wondered when she had started to think of it as Malfoy's armchair. She had seen Fred sprawled in it about a million times and had herself sat in it quite often. It didn't make any sense to associate that chair with Malfoy. The Slytherin boy still looked pretty ill. He was even paler than usual – probably due to the blood loss Harry's idiotic use of spells-someone-scribbled-into-an-old-school-book had caused – and he seemed to have lost a few pounds since they had last met. She felt an urge to walk over to him, pull him close and tell him she would protect him from harm. But the only thing Draco Malfoy needed to be protected from was Draco Malfoy and Hermione knew that was a lost cause.

"What was it you were playing?"

"Something I wrote together with Fred."

"The weasel?", Malfoy grinned. "Well at least one of the decent weasels. I always thought the twins had some balls. Was that tune supposed to be this nerve-wreckingly fast?"

Hermione shook her head and looked down at her fingers, slender long fingers with short fingernails. She could hear Malfoy shift in his seat.

"Were you upset, Granger?"

She looked up, expecting his usual sarcastic smile to be written all over his face. But he only looked tired. She shrugged, then decided to tell the truth. They were in the music room after all. This was a parallel universe to everything that was going on in the world outside. Here, it did not matter that she was a Mudbood and he was the son of a Death Eater. Here, they were just two lost souls on a raft drifting through space and time.

"I was worried. I heard Harry had used that horrible spell on you and he probably didn't even tell me the whole story but it still sounded pretty bad and … I am glad you're alive and well", she finished.

Draco shook his head. His half-smile didn't look too convincing. He covered his face in his hands.

"You don't know what you're saying Granger. If you knew... if you knew what is going on, you'd wish Potter had killed me."

She shook her head violently, sent her curls flying from side to side. She knew she would never have been able to wish Draco Malfoy dead after she had heard him play. Whatever he did, whatever happened. She knew him better than anyone else could ever know him and she knew, he was no monster, no evil psychopath, not even the spoiled big-mouthed brat she had always perceived him as when they were younger. He was only a boy who was chased by more demons than anyone else. They sat in silence for a while, before Hermione spoke again.

"Come", she said and shifted her seat on the piano stool so he could sit next to her. "Let's play something together."

Draco stared at her in disbelief, but he got to his feet, steadying himself on the back of the armchair.

"But what do we play?", he asked when he sat down at her side, bringing with him the faint smell of Madame Pomfrey's potions and his usual whiff of peppermint. His body was warm and alive and Hermione was relieved Harry had not killed his arch enemy in that bathroom.

"Doesn't matter", she said. "Just improvise."


	6. Foe and Fiend

W _hen we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other."_

― _Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape_

He ran, because running was everything, because there was no way back. Dumbledore was dead. He was dead and he, Draco, had not killed him. The Dark Lord would be furious. And Snape had finished the old man off without a second of hesitation. Snape, who had always been the Lord's particular pet, although nobody understood why.

His feet were moving, his heart was pumping, his eyes were open but he did not really notice anything. His ears were filled with white noise almost as if he had gone deaf the second he had realized that his whole world was about to collapse. He had managed to keep a balance for almost a year. He had managed to differentiate between who he was for Hermione Granger and who he was for everyone else. It had been difficult but he had managed. And now the cord, which had been pulled on until it had been strained so much it could not withstand even the slightest movement into either direction, had snapped, had catapulted him out of the castle, out of reach of this girl who had seen into his soul and still kept up hoping he would come round, and into the arms of the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters.

Bellatrix blew up Hagrid's hut and cackled insanely. She was insane. She probably had already been insane before her time in Azkaban, but the imprisonment had made it worse. And she longed for the Dark Lord in a way that was disgusting and impossible to understand for anyone else. Draco saw everything, saw Harry Potter and Snape shout at each other, saw the curses flying. But he didn't feel anything. It was as if his soul had been wiped clean of emotion and was as white and clean and barren as a pathology before a dissection. He was surprised to find his heart was still beating and his lungs drew breath at regular intervals, because he was pretty sure that this was what it felt like to be dead.

He knew that some people believed there was an afterlife but he did not. He thought if you were pushing daisies, the only thing that ever was, was silence, darkness, loneliness and emptiness. Death was a hopeless place. It had to be.

They ran until they had reached the borders of the school grounds. There were a shitload of enchantments working here. He could almost physically feel it, when they passed through. Bellatrix did a victory dance and screamed wildly, but Snape's voice was still as calm as ever. They needed to apparate to Malfoy Manor, where the Dark Lord was holding court, where Draco's mother was waiting to hear the news. Draco shuddered.

"Come on, ickle Draco, let's go home", Bellatrix teased pouting her lips.

Draco looked back up to the castle. There was light in almost all the windows now. The Death Eaters had woken everyone up. He felt a surprising pang of regret, when he noticed this was probably the last he would ever see of the castle and that there was no way he'd be returning after the summer as a student again. There was no way back. The band had snapped. He closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. He would never be able to return to the music-room so his first and foremost duty had to be to keep everything about his encounters with Hermione Granger a secret. He swore that, unless they used the Cruciatus Curse on him, there would be no chance in hell, they would ever find out.

"Draco!", he heard Snape's voice, unwavering, cold. "Let's go."

And with a final look back to the four towers of Hogwarts, Draco spun on the spot and disapparated.

" _Just improvise", Hermione said._

 _He wondered whether she knew that her hair looked amazing when it was completely untamed. He wondered whether she used perfume or whether it was her shower gel that smelled like honey. He wondered whether she knew that whenever he felt the weight of his task becoming too heavy to bear, he closed his eyes to see her the way he had seen her that first day he had burst into her playing. She had been completely absorbed in the music, lost in a world far from reality. There had been a glow about her that had fascinated him. He had never given the outer appearance of Hermione Granger much though before that day. She was just a Mudblood anyways. Draco Malfoy did not fancy Muggle-borns. But that day had changed everything. That moment had shown him another world, another possibility, another truth._

" _I can't improvise", he said hoarsely._

 _She was so close, so close, too close. How could she stand to sit that close to him. How could she not hate him after all the name-calling and the bullying?_

" _You can", she said. "I heard you play before, remember?"_

 _Hesitantly, he put his hands onto the keys. A melody formed in his head. The melody that had been there since the moment he had realized how adorable this girl was. She nodded encouragingly and he started playing._

 _She let him go on for about a minute. Her eyes were closed, her breathing regular. She swayed slightly, following the tune. Then she opened her eyes again and, without even a second of hesitation, came up with a harmony to his tune._

 _The two strands of melody fit perfectly. It did not feel like they were making them up on the go. It felt as if they had already lingered somewhere waiting for them to finally wake them up and bring them to live. Their hands found their ways without thinking. Hermione's right dived under his left to reach a few higher notes, then she moved back down to her end of the keyboard. His left jumped over both of her hands to reach the notes at the very bottom. They never crashed, never tried to play the same note at the same time, yet managed to weave the melodies into a wonderful musical pattern. He didn't even know how long they had played when Hermione suddenly dropped out and stopped playing. He wanted to tell her to go on, to play until this hell had passed, until they could walk out of this door and into the world not as enemies but as friends. But she rested her hands on his wrists and slowly pulled them off the keyboard, forcing him to look at her. Her right hand went up to tough his cheek and he noticed his face was wet. Had he been crying?_

 _The whole thing in the bathroom had started because Harry Potter, that git, had caught him crying. But he didn't mind if Hermione saw. She had seen everything already. She had seen his soul and – by some miracle he couldn't understand – she was still here._

 _Her brown eyes looked sad and he realized she was close to tears as well. For a few seconds their gazes locked, then she bent forward and just brushed his lips very quickly with hers. It wasn't even a proper kiss, just the dream of a kiss, but it was so much better than any kiss he had ever gotten from Pansy and the likes of hers._

 _He pulled her into a hug and felt her heart beat against his chest. He only noticed how long they had sat there, hardly moving an inch, when the clock chimed seven._

" _I will have to go back up to the Hospital Wing", he murmured, reluctantly loosening his grip. "I promised Madame Pomfrey I'd be back for dinner."_

 _Hermione nodded and managed a smile. He tried to stand up, but his knees didn't really obey his commands. Some colourful swearing and two more tries later, he was leaning against the wall next to the door fighting down nausea._

" _Do you...", Hermione hesitated, then straightened her back and walked up to him with a brisk stride before offering him her arm. He stared down at it in disbelief._

" _What?"_

" _I'm going to walk you up to the Hospital Wing", she said matter-of-factly. "Because you clearly won't be able to do that on your own."_

 _And thus she had done. It had been a brave thing to do, to allow their music-room-selves to exist outside that confined safe haven. She had made it look as if it was easy, as if she did not realize what a huge step she was taking. They had not met anyone in the corridors. Everyone was in the Great Hall having dinner. The silence of the castle had been almost complete except for the faint noise of Peeves destroying something a few floors below them which sounded a lot like a huge chandelier._

 _Madame Pomfrey had looked astonished for a very brief moment and then gone back to being a nurse, deciding her patient needed to rest. She had pushed him into his bed and fed him two spoonfuls of Bill Barney's Blood-Booster. Hermione had waited in a corner, unsure what to do. When Madame Pomfrey had hurried off for a minute, the Gryffindor walked over to his bed._

" _I better go now", she said._

 _Her fingers brushed ever so slightly against the back of his hands._

" _Get well soon, Draco."_

 _She turned on the spot and was already on her way to the door, when he held her back._

" _Wait", he murmured._

 _She turned around, a questioning look on her beautiful face._

" _Thank you, Hermione", he said hoarsely. "Thank you for everything."_


End file.
